India: Municipal authorities in Ahmedabad plan to order the relocation of all new and existing ready-mix concrete plants in the city away from residential areas. The Times of India newspaper has reported that the order is due in July 2025. This follows a recent update to plant guidelines to increase space requirements and licence fees.

Ireland: SlateRete is reportedly developing a novel concrete alternative using slate waste. The Irish Times newspaper has reported that the product will launch in 2026, once SlateRete achieves its pre-seed funding target of €850,000. The company plans to secure the necessary certifications for structural use.

Co-founder Hamed Panahiazar said that slate is ‘widely available,’ while its disposal ‘can be a headache’ for the Irish building trade.

Ukraine: Ma'Ryzhany Hemp Company has started up a new €17.7m hemp processing plant in Zhytomyr, situated in the Ma'Ryzhany industrial park, 160km from Kyiv. The plant will process hemp into various products, including shives for use in concrete, chipboard and bioplastics production. The plant has a capacity of 14,000t/yr and employs 200 workers.

Ireland: Researchers at Trinity College Dublin's School of Engineering have developed a novel, 51%-reduced CO₂ concrete using biomass ash from the Edenderry power station. Precast concrete products company FLI Precast Solutions also collaborated on the research, which piloted two possible methods. The first method partially replaces cement with biomass ash, while the second eliminates cement entirely through geo-polymerisation of ash with slag. Enterprise Ireland funded the project under its Construct Innovate initiative. The partners will now seek to advance the adoption of this technology across Ireland.

The Edenderry power station supplies 150,000 homes with energy produced using 100% biomass from wood and agricultural sources.

Researcher Sara Pavia said "Biomass is inherently carbon-neutral. However, the disposal of the resulting ash byproduct represents a considerable challenge.”